Wednesday, December 10, 2008

getting to know my audience

I'm curious to know a little bit more about my readers. I've gotten to know those of you who comment by reading your comments and blogs, but I have a suspicion that there are many lurkers out there. That's cool, I lurk too. I read TONS of blogs but I comment on very few. But I am interested in the general composition of my readership. Are you mostly scientists? Non-scientist academics? Stay at home parents? Avocado farmers?

I'm curious because I get annoyed when I sit in a classroom where I'm required to be because it's supposed to be useful or relevant to my work and the person lecturing seems to have no idea who I am or what I do (see here and here). Obviously a blog is different; this is my life and you don't have to read it if you don't want to. Still, I don't want to insult my readers by over-explaining things or lose them because they have no idea what I'm talking about.

So, dear readers, I have a very short four-question survey multiple-choice that I would love for you to fill out. My apologies if I have neglected to include a selection that even comes close to describing who you are. There is a fill-in option for each question if you fall into another category. This survey will not collect any identifying information about you or your location.

Click Here to take my very short survey!

Thanks, readers!

P.S. If I don't get many responses, I'm going to truncate my feed so that you feed-reading lurkers have to show up on my Google Analytics visit count. Take the survey! Please!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're such a scientist :p

Paulina said...

what does truncating the feed mean and entail?

Karina said...

Hi Paulina,
Truncating the feed means that if you use a feed reader to read my blog, you won't be able to see entire posts. You'll get a preview, and then you'll have to click on the title to read the rest. As a result, I would get a better idea of how many people read my blog each day because by clicking on the page, it registers the visit on Google Analytics. Reading only in the feed reader doesn't. Hope that helps!

Karina said...

Thanks to my 24 readers who have filled out the survey so far! My apologies for neglecting MATHEMATICS as an option- what a terrible oversight! I don't think my mother will forgive me. I added astronomy as an option too, though I suspect I only have one astronomer reader.

Transient Theorist said...

Thanks :-)

All is forgiven (although I can't speak for your mother).

TT